Out Of Chaos

A friend of mine bemoaned the fact that she was going to spend her weekend changing the liners in her kitchen cabinets and drawers. I just smiled. I can remember the days when I used to have to re-line the cabinets every six months or so. What an exasperating chore it was!

I tried using adhesive backed liner paper. You cut it to the size of the drawer or shelf, and then you practice your acrobatics as you attempt to place it on the surface without wrinkles or bubbles. I always made a mess of it, and was glad that it would be covered by dishes.

I haven’t had to bother with that in six years, because I found a way to simplify the process:

Every drawer and cabinet shelf in my house
is lined with vinyl floor tiles.

Armed with an Exacto knife, to score the tiles, I lined everything. You don’t have to cut the tiles, if you simply score them, they will break cleanly and evenly.

That might sound like a lot of work to you, but think about it for a minute. Do it once, and forever after all you have to do is wipe the shelves now and then to have them looking nice! It isn’t much more work than that sticky liner paper. In the long run, it even turns out to be less expensive (although your initial outlay might be more).

You can find the vinyl tiles at your local hardware center. They come in many colors, and you can find attractive tiles for as little as 98 cents for a 12 x 12 tile.

My friend spent her weekend re-lining the cabinets. I went to the movies. That works for me.

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I haven’t been posting on this blog much lately, but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been busy trying to get our lives simplified.  Work, family, and health issues got in the way of blogging.  Don’t they always? That’s real life for you.

As I start the new year fresh, I hope to chronicle our attempts more often. It really keeps me on track to write about our progress, but I couldn’t begin to explain why that would be. I just know it works to keep me motivated. So, here I go again.

New Year’s Day, at least for me, is typically the day I take down all the Christmas decorations. Believe me, at my age, I’ve collected quite a few. In fact, we have a closet full of holiday “glitz.” I’ve toned it down quite a bit in the last few years, because the kid’s outgrew their delight in the holiday ornaments, but I’ve still got much more than I really want to store all year.

This year, after I had the house decorated in all of it’s holiday glory, I set aside every decoration I didn’t use. I sorted through everything and made some hard decisions. I boxed up every decoration that had sentimental value, but that I didn’t use (such as the Christmas stocking that my husband’s mother knitted him when he was a child). I packaged those away and put them at the back of the closet.

As I looked through the other ornaments, I tried to determine if it was something I loved, or if I was just keeping it because I am a packrat. I was able to take about half of those ornaments and either throw them away or donate them. The rest, I’ve put into a box labeled “Unused.”

As I took down the decorations in each room, I put them in shoe boxes with labels that will tell me next year where I used them. Most of my ornaments are small enough that I can fit them into a shoe box. I used to package the decorations into the Christmas tins I always seem to get, but I’ve decided that round cans don’t stack very well (only took me thirty years to figure that out). Now, I try to use boxes that are similar sizes, so I can maximize my space.

Next year, I’ll be able to put up the decorations much faster, because I won’t have to sort and sift through everything. I’ll just carry the box labeled “Mantel” to the living room and set it up.

If those boxes labeled “Unused” remain so again next year, I promise they are going out the door!

Y’all hold me to that, won’t you?

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Difficult, difficult, difficult…
   Easy, easy, easy…
Neither difficult nor easy.
          -Zen Buddhism

As I work at sorting clutter, I occasionally feel as if I’m floundering. We have so much that is just junk, and I don’t always know what to do with it. I get overwhelmed.

I was ready to just give up at about the time I found the above quotation. I sat down and pondered it for a bit. It seemed silly at first. The more I thought about it, though, the more I understood that it is true. If you want to accomplish a task (whether it is de-cluttering the house or preparing a speech), you need the proper attitude.

One step at a time, I’m continuing to de-clutter and organize. I’m chanting this quote as a mantra.

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It’s time to remove some books in our lives. I know it’s true, and I have been denying it for years. It’s time to put on my “big girl panties” and deal with it.

Since we hope to move to a house that is at least one third smaller than this one, I have optimistically decided that we will cull 1/3 of the books. That would be the ideal, anyway. I don’t know if we can do it.

I decided we needed a plan. Maybe you have a better one? This is how we have to go about sorting and culling books:

1. When you are beginning the de-cluttering process, it’s best to take it in small doses. Set a timer and work for 30 minutes. Don’t take out more than you can put back on the shelf at the end of the 30 minute period. You don’t want to wind up with a bigger mess than the one you had in the first place.
2. Be prepared to experience remorse. There is no way around it. Some of those books are “old friends,” and you will naturally miss them. Rest assured that the process will get easier as you go along.
3. Empty one or two bookshelves to hold books as you sort the ones you want to keep.
4. Determine some “categories” for your books, so that you can sort them accordingly. It’s much easier than putting them on the shelves hodge podge. Your categories will be different from mine. You can have tons of subcategories, if you wish, but your immediate goal is to simplify and de-clutter. Save the sub-dividing for later! I had:
• Self-help/Exercise
• Language (including dictionaries, foreign language, quotes)
• folktales (that’s a large part of my library, since those are the
  books I use for work).
• Anthologies.
• Ghost stories (another large part of my repertoire)
• Quirky collections of facts.
• Texana
5. Start sorting books by finding every book you can on one category and get those to your empty shelves.
6. When one category is together, begin to cull books. Yes, I know it makes you want to cry. Get a tissue and continue. Remove all duplicates (you really don’t need three copies of The Lord Of The Rings).
7. As you look at each book, ask yourself:
   • A. Do I really love it?
   • B. Does is have monetary value or is it irreplaceable?
   • C. Will I really read it again (no seriously!)? And, when? If the answer is five years from now, you don’t need to store it until then!
8. If you can live without it, put it in your discard pile.
9. After you have finished with one category, move on to the next.
10. At the end of your session for the day, take the books out of the house! You don’t need the temptation of seeing them, and the reduction in clutter will be a small victory for you.
11. Rejoice in the victory, and celebrate. But, not by going to Barnes & Noble and buying more books!

This is what we are doing. It is quite difficult to do, but already we are seeing a difference. So far, we have no regrets. But, now it’s going to get harder. We have removed the books we could easily see that we didn’t want or need. The next step is culling out from the ones we thought were “keepers.”

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